3G Licenses Issue Still Hanging In Air

Government of Pakistan’s decision regarding the auction of 3G licenses is still pending; on the other hand, it looks like IT ministry has not even finalized the 3G policy yet. 3G proposals, procedures and modalities for the auction of licenses in the country are also still pending and yet to be finalized by MoIT.

Earlier, President Asif Ali Zardari’s meeting in which he formed a cabinet to solve the issue of auctioning the 3G licenses, and today, President ordered that committee to hold another meeting right after Ministry of Information Technology finalizes its proposals after consulting with other relevant ministries and departments.

Government Still Confused

Some sources close to the development reported that Government is still confused about the matter of 3G auctioning matter. It looks like that Government’s both hands are tied because first of all it wants to generate money by auctioning the 3G licenses but on the other hand it is bound by the agreement it signed with Etisalat to not issue 3G licenses till 2013 and another reason is that some of the reluctant cellular operators are also pressuring the Government to not auction the licenses because they don’t want to invest in 3G yet.

So, the sources state the government will have to take a definite initiative in a week or too but it is very unclear that what government might decide and what will be the future of Pakistan in 3G technology field.

An Overview Of The Whole Situation

Now for all who are not completely aware about the matter, let’s take an overview. Government started to think about 3G auctioning after annual budget in July, as it was planning to make at least Rs. 75 billion to fulfill the budget deficit. There were many delays after that, but in October official statement came from Government to start the 3G auctioning soon.

Government still stated that Etisalat was behind the delay in 3G license auction, because it had an agreement with government which bounded government to not to auction the 3G licenses until Mart 2013.